Episode three of Under Salt Marsh sees Sky’s new six-part thriller dig deeper, darker, and with real intent into what’s going on in the fictional community of Morfa Halen. After a debut that really took great care and time to build mood, intrigue and a quietly gripping whodunit story, this chapter keeps the same simmering pace while detonating a series of revelations that reframe almost everything we thought we knew.
Kelly Reilly and Rafe Spall continue to make an oddly compelling investigative pairing. Their dynamic remains unconventional – sometimes abrasive, sometimes oddly tender – but it works precisely because it resists the usual cop-show rhythms. There’s friction, history, and a sense that neither quite trusts the other’s instincts, even when they’re aligned.
Much of the episode’s attention centres on the toxic waste buried at the landfill on Solomon Bevan’s farm. Patriarch Solomon, unsurprisingly, denies any wrongdoing, despite the uncomfortable fact that Cefin visited the farm on the day of his death. Bull’s police partner Jess Deng, however, begins to look past the obvious suspect and focuses instead on August Antonov, the Romanian farmhand, an angle that raises uncomfortable questions about exploitation, power, and who gets blamed when secrets get buried.
Elsewhere, Jackie’s investigation into the now-adult ‘kids’ who were with Nessa during her last day delivers some of the episode’s most devastating material. Cathy’s confession about their treatment of Nessa is chilling: the bullying, the dares, the threats when Nessa said she’d tell her parents. Most crucially, Ness wasn’t in the woods as previously believed, but alone at the quarry. That revelation lands with grim inevitability.
The personal storylines continue to add character depth as the procedural business grinds on. Jackie’s pregnancy by her rough-edged toyboy Dylan Rees is a genuine shock, while Bull’s long-ambiguous relationship with meteorologist Gareth Morgan finally tips into clarity. Their night together – following a break-in at Morgan’s house – feels less sensational than quietly sad, a glimpse into Bull’s unresolved interior life.
Then comes the real gut punch: Nessa’s body is found at the quarry, buried in what appears to be a shallow grave. Solomon’s sudden march into the police station to “confess” is a strong cliffhanger, but perhaps the episode’s biggest under-the-radar moment is subtler: Jackie reframes Nessa and Cefin’s childhood drawings, once thought to depict a beekeeper, as unmistakably a man in a hazmat suit.
Paul Hirons
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.